What if Glory had won?
by FPB
Summary: Glory could have won. She could have opened the gates to all the worlds, letting loose all the demons of all the universes. What could Buffy had done THEN? Die, you say? Well...


WHAT IF GLORY HAD WON?  
  
By F.P.Barbieri  
  
The grinning monster that had sought Dawn's blood lay broken and shattered a hundred feet below them; and it had not been enough. Buffy had beaten the most terrible enemy she had ever fought into standstill and surrender; and it had not been enough. Buffy had ripped her sister from the sacred place of slaughter; and it had not been enough.  
  
For a drop of Dawn's blood had fallen; and that was enough. Around them things were happening to the sky that were not holes, not galleries, not folds – not anything that has three dimensions. The bending was taking place beyond the limits of our senses, where that which sees and hears and touches cannot reach; but it was changing the things they saw and heard and touched. A wave of horrors from places that men cannot understand was gathering at the edges of the things we perceive. And Buffy could feel, around herself, within herself, how everything that has three dimensions was screaming in pain.  
  
But something even worse was happening below. Rupert Giles had taken Ben by surprise and tried to murder him; but Ben, in the utmost terror of death, had done the one thing he hated – he had summoned Glory. Suddenly, what was under Giles' hand was no longer the face of a young man; it was the flesh and blood of Glory. And even with the terrible wounds inflicted by Olaf the Troll's hammer, she was far more than capable of breaking his hold and sending him careening against the wall.  
  
She did not kill him, for she did not have the time. She forced a surge of power through her shattered body; knit together her bones and bruised muscles by the most brutal application of magic imaginable, ripping the energy out of the very ether (and Willow felt it being pulled out of her); and then, momentarily near-mad with the terror of near death, the pain of suddenly healed wounds, the fury of frustration, she threw herself up the stairs of the metal rig she had commanded.  
  
Willow was stunned, dazed, by the sudden outflow of power. She did not even know that it was possible to rip magic from the air like that, an unsettling, terrifying experience of weakening, of hollowing out. She turned to Tara with an instinctive stabbing terror that the mind she had recovered for her might have been stolen again; but the eyes that met her, while shocked, were steady enough. Tara, too, had felt the drain. – Glory was halfway up the stairs – And Buffy was telling to a weeping Dawn that she would give her life for hers – and did not know that her enemy was coming - It only took a second for both witches to realize what they should really have been thinking of; then Willow's mind reached desperately up to Buffy – and Dawn, through her tears, looked over Buffy's shoulder – and she screamed.  
  
Across the shivering walkway, without a mark on her body, their enemy came.  
  
Everything was lost, then – Buffy's mind raced. She had thrown everything there was to throw at Glory and had not defeated her; and, up here, she did not have Olaf's hammer, the thing that for a moment had seemed like giving her victory. She was alone, a hundred feet above solid concrete, with Dawn to protect (how?), Hell behind her and Glory between her and any even remotely safe way down. For a second she thought that she could frustrate Glory by throwing herself into the opening gateway ahead of schedule and seal it with her death; and in the time it took her to formulate that thought, Glory, with blurring speed, was ahead of her, blocking her way down.  
  
"Uh-uh, honey. No thoroughfare. That road is reserved for Dawny's sweet little red cells."  
  
At that point, Buffy was already ready for death; now she had to make up her mind – much harder – to defeat. Her words came back to her: "Then the last thing Dawn sees will be me fighting for her." Time was making those words come true; and she could only hope that the death of Dawn would be painless – and her own swift, violent, and injurious to her enemy.  
  
But Glory did not charge. She stood there, smiling her sick smile, relaxed. Her brief madness of anger and fear was gone. She did not have to fight – things, she thought, were going her way. The distortion was growing no weaker; Dawn was bleeding – but so slowly that the horror might go on growing for days. She looked around herself with shining eyes. Then her arm suddenly reached out, grabbing Buffy by her sweater, lifting her slightly off the ground. Buffy's entire weight now hung from Glory's slender right arm; she was practically helpless – and she could feel space going on twisting, feel it within herself. Her own nature was giving her warning that Glory had won.  
  
"Don't be silly, honey. There's no need for you to die. There's not even any need for you to suffer much longer."  
  
"Shut -- up!"  
  
"Why should I? Why let you go on being stubborn and silly and ridiculous and kick against your destiny?"  
  
"You're -- not – destiny - - What do – you – know"  
  
"Oh yes I am. I am a god. I make destiny. You fought me and you lost. You cannot defeat a god; you cannot defeat the soul of the world... the heart of all that is.  
  
"But I don't want you dead, you know. I've come to know you very well indeed, and I have no particular desire to do to you all... or any... of the things which I am going to do to my rebellious ex-colleagues. You are not a rebel; just a silly, pathetic loyalist to a world not worth being loyal to."  
  
Something about the way she spoke made Buffy grow white with inner fear; and suddenly she understood why. With every passing second, Glory's speech was growing more deliberate, more ornate, more impressive. She spoke less and less like a spoiled brat with super-powers, and more and more like the judicious, wise, terrible cosmic power she claimed to be. The distortion was affecting her; while Buffy was losing contact with her own nature, growing weaker and more confused, Glory was regaining hers.  
  
Buffy had not thought that further depths of despair were possible, but this increasing and visible change was to her an even deeper darkness. Her nature was slipping away from her with each second. People and things no longer bore the relationships she was familiar with. She could no longer fight, not even think of struggling; she had no footing to kick from, no leverage, no balance from which to exercise strength – her whole physical being now hung from Glory's mocking arm. She and her world were becoming puppets in the dance of a cosmic mistress. And heartbreakingly, maddeningly, the voice of her enemy went on, smiling, caressing, seducing in the midst of all the chaos.  
  
"You are clinging to a lot of silly postures – they're not even ideas, honey – trying to tell yourself how heroic it is to resist Fate, to go on fighting to the last, to be the last to fall. It's not heroic; it's pathetic. It's a waste of time and energy. It achieves nothing. It hardly even slows fate down.  
  
Buffy clenched her teeth; as her enemy spoke, she could feel the waves of change in her own being. "That's not ---"she hissed in pain "---not what – it's about."  
  
"No?" smiled Glory mockingly. "It's not about being Buffy The Great Summers, girl hero? What is it then, sweetie?"  
  
Life and breath were swirling like mad things within Buffy. She sought desperately for something to hold on to, something that was still true amidst all the chaos; and suddenly she saw the face of her sister before her, terrified pleading, bleeding. That was one thing that was true, she thought; she held on to her love for her sister, for her mother. "It is... It is... that you are wrong. That you kill people.. That you hurt and take pleasure in hurting. It is that you are wicked. If you killed me fifty times, you'd still be wicked and you'd still be wrong; and you'd never get me to say anything else. You can silence me and you can kill me, but you will never change my mind."  
  
Buffy's voice trailed off. Glory's face hardened. She looked at her in contempt, and hissed: "Kill you fifty times? I can do it, you know... And I will. For your insolence. You deserve it. And when you're fifty times dead, you still won't have begun to taste of the vengeance I can dish out."  
  
But Buffy was calm now. She had faced the worst; she was not afraid to die, not even to lose. Still dangling from Glory's outstretched arm, she looked straight at her enemy in the face and said: "Do what you want. But I'm damned if I ever tell you that you're right."  
  
Then a whisper came from behind them, sudden and unexpected as a breath of air in a dark place – "Yes", it said, "you would indeed be damned if you accepted that wrong is right."  
  
Something was happening to the light. Until that moment, Glory had been shining brighter and brighter, and the shadows around her had all been cast by her; now suddenly Buffy realized that she was casting a shadow on Glory herself, and that the light was coming no longer from Glory, but from behind. Glory's face twisted; no longer in contemptuous hate of the human girl dangling like a fish from her arm, but in horror and detestation at something behind her, something that Buffy still could not see.  
  
Buffy fell from Glory's hand, and, suddenly, there was a floor below her to fall on. Then suddenly she realized that someone was striding, and that each step echoed through the universe, through her being – and that with each step, the floor beneath her was being made. Trembling, terrified, she felt Dawn hug her, and hugged desperately back; both of them were still looking at Glory, who herself stared with fixed, electric glare at something behind them.  
  
"You cannot.", she said with calm violence, "you cannot take this from me. Not even you... The world is mine, and I want it back!"  
  
Buffy finally found the strength to turn. One sun, two, five, ten suns... Only they were not suns, they had arms and legs, and strong shining faces. They looked, they saw, they spoke; like human beings, only so much more like humans than humans are like themselves. And her terror began to melt like the snow in spring, as the shining figures kept walking down. It was their steps she had felt; each step as if down a great staircase of being, reaching and finding another world to stand on.  
  
"Oh, Glorificus, you foolish creature, did you perchance think that if you opened the worlds only things like yourself would come forth? Did you think that all the worlds held things as brute, as cruel, as rebellious?" "I am not a creature!" answered Glory angrily. "Do not delude yourself" – said another voice, calm and confident – "You are a servant as we all are; but a rebellious servant." A shining hand rose; and, humiliated, weeping bitterly, red with grief and shame, Glory fell to her knees, as if driven by an invisible force she could not resist.  
  
"But have no fear, Glorificus. You will have what belongs to you. You may now return to the dire lands of your birth – and with all your power too. Your two rebellious colleagues deserve you, and you deserve them. And we will see whether the droplet of humanity called Ben, that the spell threw into you, is enough to lead you to the sanity you never had."  
  
One of the shining people stretched out her hand towards the humiliated, kneeling Glory. She was lifted from the place, shifted through space, a sort of strange patch opened around her, and – she was there no longer. Buffy looked on in disbelief, stunned at the swiftness of the event, feeling somehow that something more should have been done, should have been said; startled that someone who had had such a large part of her recent life – could be gone – and gone so fast.  
  
Through all this she had been clinging to Dawn, and Dawn to her. Now they broke apart and got up shakily. They saw the shining people coming towards them, gesticulating as they went; and suddenly Buffy saw – or rather, perceived – that they were repairing the holes in reality. Each gesture was calm, careful, precise, like a workman repairing a complicated mechanism. And now the foremost ones were before her; and she made as if to kneel.  
  
"Do not kneel: for we are servants, even as you are."  
  
Buffy's eyes rose, to take in the creature who had spoken to her – and she saw that a hand was touching Dawn's wounded hand, and healing what it touched. In a few seconds, the blood had stopped flowing; the motive power of the spell was gone. "Live", said the shining person.  
  
"Yes, live, both of you. Do not think you are a delusion, Dawn Summers; however your birth was managed, you are a human being with a life and a death, a personality and a soul. Live, Buffy Anne Summers; you have borne witness to the truth even when there seemed to be no truth to be witnessed, and you have clung to goodness even when you did not believe that any goodness would respond." Buffy's eyes did not tire of taking in more and more of the beautiful, shining crowd – all different, all noble, all worthy of love beyond anything she had ever imagined or conceived. Suddenly she was afraid – she thought she might lose her love for her sister in the ocean of these new loves, these new beautiful things; but when she turned to Dawn, and saw her, too, lit by lights beyond the world – then she saw that she had not even begun to realize how lovely her sister was, and how truly worthy of her love.  
  
Kettledrums, trumpets, hundreds and hundreds of massed strings; it was as if music had taken shape and form. Rank after rank, rank after rank, of beauty – space after space, opening, shining, each more glorious than the last; and among them – Buffy suddenly held her breath – one so dearly beloved, so intimately known, looking at her now with the majesty of a goddess, and yet more close, more undemanding, more private and near and dear than ever – her mother; her mother, in the company of the saints. Her mother, who had never ceased to care for her, who from a world whose beauty Buffy could hardly take in; her mother, who, in the presence of what is noble beyond conception, had never forgotten what she loved on Earth.  
  
And through her mother, beyond her mother, there was another vista – a vista to which there was no end. For there is a place where everything that is noble and good and beautiful, from the smallest to the greatest thing, from a casual gesture of friendship to the thunder of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, is present – more present, even, than it was where these things were made; to which everything in the world which is true and precious and worthy of love resorts, as to its true home, wherever and however it is done. And Buffy saw it, saw it through her mother, saw it as the love that her mother had, the love which made her beautiful, its infinity which is yet as simple and intimate as the simplicity of love - - and there was the world back again as it was; as she knew it. There were the long prospects of buildings and shops, people looking at each other, rubbish on the streets. There were the places that people had built for themselves, to work and rest, to live in till they died; and beyond the land, stretching out green, orange, black. There was the world – saved; not any paradise, but the place where so much struggle, so much mystery, so much pain, so much loss was always taking place. A place where she, Buffy, had suffered so much. Only now it did not look so bad. Everywhere she saw the traces, the striations of light from another reality; as though matter and form still bore the fingerprints of That which had made them, and preserved them, and loved them.  
  
(Another good thing happened then, though nobody was to know it – for it concerned not something which was to be done, but something which was not going to be. Willow, soon to become the world's most powerful sorceress, stood in the shadow of the battle and felt, even where she did not see, the greatness and the glory of what was taking place. So she was cured of an illness she did not even know she had; she knew the true value of magic, what it is and what it is not, and how infinitely inferior it is to the true eternal things. Her sick pull towards the abuse of magic vanished from her soul; there would from then on be no mad Willow, no evil sorceress seduced by the darkness of her anger – only a humble, loving, unselfish and incredibly powerful patron of everything around her that needed protection.)  
  
Years later, a poem, met and read by chance, reminded Buffy of those days, and that unearned triumph; and she could, by then, bear witness to the truth of its closing lines:  
  
A cloud was on the minds of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended – but you, and I, were gay! Round us in antic order their crippled vices came – Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler that lit our aimless gloom Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded; and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named – Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.  
  
Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that black Baal blocked the heavens, he had no hymns from us. Children we were – our forts of sand were even as weak as we, High as we piled them up to break that bitter sea; Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd – When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.  
  
Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; Some giants laboured in that darkness to lift it from the world. I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass Roared in the wind of all the world ten thousand LEAVES OF GRASS; Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain, Truth out of TUSITALA spoke, and pleasure out of pain. Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.  
  
But we were young. We lived to see God break their bitter charms, God and the good Republic come riding back in arms; We have seen the city of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved – Blessed are those who did not see, but, being blind, believed.  
  
This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells: Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, Of what huge devils hid the sky, yet fell at a pistol flash. The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand – Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand? The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain And day had broke in the streets ere it broke upon the brain. Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; Yea, there is strength in striking root, and good in growing old. We have found common things at last, and marriage, and a Creed: And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. 


End file.
